Hispanic radio stations crack Chicago's Top 10

WOJO-FM 105.1, WLEY-FM 107.9 become a force

They laugh, sing corny songs, and seize just about every opportunity to make fun of each other. And it's all done with orgullo Mexicano. Mexican pride, that is.

For the morning show team at WOJO-FM 105.1, that brassy, Mexico-focused format has allowed the Spanish-language station to capture new ratings clout. It became Chicago's No. 1 Spanish-language station this week. But it's not the only one doing well.

For the first time, two of the nine Chicago radio stations catering to a Hispanic audience cracked the Top 10. The achievement shows how influential Spanish-speaking consumers have become and how they're transforming Hispanic media into commercial powerhouses.

"Spanish-language media keeps gaining new fans," said Alissa Goldwasser, a media analyst for William Blair & Co., based in Chicago. "It's becoming a real force."

The most recent ratings figures, compiled by Arbitron, show WOJO to be No. 8 in the overall Chicago radio market, closely followed by WLEY-FM 107.9, a Spanish-language station that holds the ninth spot.

The radio surge follows an explosion in the city's Hispanic population. About 1.5 million Latinos now live in the Chicago area, according to the 2000 Census, making Hispanics the city's largest minority group.

"Population has everything to do with the success of these stations," said Ron Rodrigues, editor-in-chief of Radio & Records. "I have every reason to believe that if it follows the same kind of pattern that we've seen in Houston and Los Angeles and New York, it's going to be an even greater force in Chicago."

Driving WOJO's success has been a style that it took straight from the pages of competitor WLEY: all local, all the time. Local in the Hispanic market, however, isn't just Chicago. It's also Mexico, where 85 percent of the city's Hispanics are from.

For WOJO, the focus on Mexican programming represents a big change. It used to be that the station didn't cater to any one of the city's Hispanic groups--Puerto Rican, Central American or Mexican--any more than the other.

WLEY changed the landscape

But then, in 1997, WLEY came into existence. Armed with research showing Chicago to be the country's second-largest Mexican market after Los Angeles, the upstart won scores of listeners with a format that plays the lyrical, accordion-style music of Mexico's provinces. The shift format enabled WLEY to push WOJO out of the top spot for Hispanic listeners.

To win back its audience, WOJO spent the last year overhauling its programming. Gone are the days of "international" music and Latin pop. Now, WOJO has put all of its eggs in the Mexican regional basket, and it has hired a new set of personalities to complete the transformation.

Last April, the station lured Mexican-born Rafael Pulido--who calls himself "El Pistolero"--out of Fresno, Calif.

"We try to bring out the humorous part of daily living that relates directly to Mexicans," Pulido said. "We do that with immigration issues, jobs, race issues, Mexican politics."

Indeed, not a moment of airtime goes by during which listeners aren't reminded of their country of origin. When greeting callers, introducing music, closing songs, or simply plugging the station, WOJO's disc jockeys exclaim, "con orgullo Mexicano!"

Friday morning, when the sports commentator announced that Colombia had defeated Mexico in a soccer match, the disc jockeys broke out in outrage. "What an embarrassment!" they exclaimed.

Just a few moments later, they went straight to the source of many Mexicans' frustration--President Vincente Fox. "Buy less, pay less, with your only dress," they joked, making fun of Fox's campaign promise of "Buy more, pay less."

But over at WLEY, station managers show signs of frustration. They allege that while WOJO has done well in the most recent ratings quarter, it is only because they have followed their own station's path.

"What we did was we really brought regional Mexican to the high profile that it is today and made it into a format in this market," said Mario Paez, WLEY's general manager. "Whereas our competitor took a couple of years to realize that Mexicans are important and decided to copy us."

Advertising dollars still lag

But not everyone is convinced the Spanish-language market can be profitable.

Though Spanish-language radio made up 6.3 percent of the Chicago market in 2002, only 5 percent of advertising revenue was directed at Chicago's Hispanic stations, according to BIA Financial Network Inc.

In a $559 million market, that's a significant amount of money that's not going to top stations like WOJO and WLEY.

"I really believe that we are just coming into our own with advertisers," said WLEY's Paez. "There are still advertisers that haven't, for whatever reason, quite learned how to market to Hispanics."